Be Eccentric! Not a Spelling Mistake…
You know when you thought lifting things gets you stronger? Well, you sure aint wrong but it turns out putting them down is even better! This is getting some airtime in Dr Michael Mosely’s popular radio show, Just One Thing. It got us here at RISE Fitness thinking about all the times we have cursed instructors and Personal Trainers who told us to hold and then slowly let the weight down, boy that was hard.
What is Eccentric Contraction?
Put simply, muscles have to extend and contract to help move you around. When they are contracting they shorten in length, called concentric contraction. When they extend they lengthen, eccentric contraction. When a muscle is still but under stress it is an isometric contraction. Now you know the three contractions of a muscle.
This article is talking about the lengthening or eccentric contraction. Here is a short definition:
An eccentric contraction is the motion of an active muscle while it is lengthening under load
Wikipedia
An easy example to think of is if you do a dumbbell curl. On the way up, the lift phase, the muscle getting shorter as it contracts to lift the weight. Then, as you lower the weight the muscle is actually getting longer (eccentric contraction) but is under the same duress. It recruits more muscle fibres during the eccentric movement so more of the muscle get challenged. And the body, being an obliging so and so, when it gets challenged it tends to respond.
How Is It Used in Training?
We need to let you know that to get stronger you need to do a bit of damage to your muscles! Don’t worry this is perfectly normal and in the form of micro tears; this has to happen so that the muscle can respond, repair and come back better.
The main goal of eccentric training is to increase the time under tension while elongating the muscle. Eccentric training can improve power, speed and stamina and is a great way to gain tone and this leads to extra Calorie burn at rest.
In the RISE Fitness bootcamp, every time you are going into a squat or lunge just remember that downward phase is as important as the up and is part of getting you a toned and lithe frame.
Make it Work for You
An interesting study that used going either up or down stairs as a form of exercise found that the people going downstairs actually got fitter and stronger than those going up! Sounds crazy doesn’t it but if you apply the theory of eccentric contraction, you realise that going downstairs is mainly about lengthening the muscles under duress and so those muscles had to respond more that the contracting muscles used for going upstairs. Maybe at work for the next week take the lift up but do the stairs down!
Remember, putting something down slowly and surely is eccentric training, although don’t try it on conversation😉
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